Major League Baseball and the Players Association share the blame for tolerating a widespread culture of drug abuse, George Mitchell's report on doping in baseball says, according to two lawyers who said they are familiar with the report.

Both lawyers told ESPN that the report assigns blame for the rise of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball "from top to bottom," and recommends that MLB and the union agree to outsource their drug testing program to an independent agency.

The sources would not reveal the names of players included in the report, but confirmed that as many as 80 are listed. One lawyer expected several "very, very high-level names" to be exposed, although Mitchell is frank in the report about how difficult it was to get information regarding the extent of player use.

"He admits that he can only go back so far because of the lack of cooperation, but says it's more important to move ahead," one lawyer said.

Mitchell plans to release his report at 2 p.m. ET Thursday at a news conference in New York City.

While the report recognizes that Selig met fierce resistance from the union when he tried to implement tougher testing during recent years, the report says that all of baseball should have seen the warning signs that were evident years ago.

Baseball and its players reached an agreement in September 2002 to test for steroids. In 2005, a new, stricter policy was implemented. Baseball and the players agreed to ban HGH in 2005, although there is no reliable test to detect the drug.

Sources said yesterday that MLBPA officials were angered that Mitchell chose not to share the report with them, but that Mitchell felt he had no obligation to the union after they fought his efforts to interview players and obtain some medical records.

Mitchell's criticisms about the current testing procedures are similar to those baseball has dismissed from other critics in the past, such as calls for more frequent testing and greater transparency in the program.

"They aren't going to like it," one lawyer said.

When Selig announced Mitchell's investigation on March 30, 2006, he said Mitchell, the former Senate majority leader, was free to pursue his investigation wherever it led. He did not say, however, whether he would abide by all of the report's recommendations.

Besides either appointing an independent administrator or hiring an outside agency to run the program (MLB currently administers the program in conjunction with the Players Association), baseball should:

? Allow the testing administrator to actively investigate "non-analytical positives," meaning information that can show a player violated the doping policy in the absence of a positive urine test. Jay Gibbons and Jose Guillen, for example, were recently suspended after MLB received information from law enforcement sources documenting that the players had received banned drugs. Neither failed a drug test.

? Improve player education about performance-enhancing drugs.

? Allow greater transparency in the program, such as naming the drugs that players test positive for. Some players try to dodge responsibility for positive tests by saying they unwittingly took a tainted diet supplement. Certain drugs could not possibly have come from supplements, but because baseball doesn't name the substances it discovers, the press and public can't determine whether the player is telling the truth.

The guy who ratted Clemens out to Mitchell is a high school classmate of mine. I'm so proud.

And Clemens isn't the only Yankee named, apparently:

espn said:

Also, The Bergen (N.J.) Record, citing a baseball industry official, says "several" prominent Yankees will be named in the Mitchell report. The paper said the source spoke to a third party who had seen the final report.

I gotta tell you, it's really hard for me to see some of those names. I grew up idolizing guys like Matt Williams, Marvin Bernard, FP Santangelo, Glenallen Hill, Benito Santiago, Bobby Estallela, and of course Bonds, all of whom were Giants not too long ago.

It makes me sick reading so many mentionable names. Until now, I always though baseball was the infallible sport. It's truly sad.

The NFL will never ban steroids. Most of the NFL is more juiced than Bonds or the Russian from Rocky IV combined

Those guys are huge for a reason...

Clemens though, I still can't believe it. In fact I chose not to believe it, simply because Mitchell only has one person backing him up on it. Who they threatened with perjury charges to get information out of.

Debate to bring up, Mitchell has some ownership in the Red Sox and only three former Red Sox players were found to have done steroids (Gagne, Clemens and Vaughn) and 16 Yankees are found to have used steroids. Can we scream bias here?!

I honestly think in the long run we have an old fashioned McCarthy witch hunt.

After reading various articles about it, and pieces of the report itself (no way am I reading that entire thing, I have better things to spend that time on), it seems like a lot of the evidence against a bunch of players is so flimsy it would be laughed out of court, or more likely never even manage to get in the courtroom at all, let alone actually be tried or successful.

Coincidentally, from an ESPN.com article about that, happening to mention the one name I was most disappointed to see on the list (Roberts is a former Gamecock shortstop)

"Take Brian Roberts, for example.

Nobody in here has a bigger beef than he does. What's the "evidence" in his case? An alleged lunch date with Radomski, David Segui and Larry Bigbie -- after which Segui is said to have bought steroids (with Roberts not present). And Bigbie's claim that Roberts told him he used steroids "once or twice," even though Bigbie never witnessed it or even suspected it.

That's it. No syringes. No empty bottles. No shipping labels. Nada. I can't think of any self-respecting editor I've ever worked for or with who would have allowed me to write a news story based on "evidence" that flimsy. So what's it doing in a report that cost more than the Florida Marlins' entire payroll?"

And plenty of others are in the same boat. So, basically, this sums up my thoughts as of now:

Are most of the people named in the report guilty? Probably.
Are there a number of people on the list that are truly innocent? Just as probably. A smaller number, most likely, but I would wager they are there, though obviously its impossible to tell who they are, at least right now.
Should the report have been written? Yeah, but I think it could have been written a lot better and its contents made a lot clearer to the public.

I wonder if the reason Mitchell kept recommending not taking action was that he knew a lot of his evidence was so incredibly flimsy.

I think the thing to remember is the report wasn't intended to find all users of performance enhancing drugs in baseball and expose them to the public. The purpose of the report was to show how widespread the problem was in baseball, how easy the old systems were to bypass, and how the sport needed to change to move forward. And, I think it did that.

I agree, it did. I just think that unfortunately, most people are only going to look at the list of names and decide for themselves that every one of those players did steroids/HGH beyond any shadow of a doubt, which is about as far from the truth as possible.

As much as people wanted the list of names (and I include myself in that list of wanting to see the names because I thought there would be more solid evidence behind them), I think the report would have been far better without names - and I think it could have still accomplished the point of showing how widespread it is, etc, etc.

Probably. But without the names, it wouldn't generate nearly as much publicity for itself. And that's part of the battle with Steroids. If the public cares and there is pressure put on MLB, the movement to ban steroids will succeed. If the public doesn't care, MLB can just continue to put fake band-aids on the problem, and be just fine. So, really, the report needed the names (and perhaps even needed the controversy about the names) to make the report as successful as possible in changing the steroid culture in baseball.

True, it wouldn't have generated as much publicity... but is the publicity its getting the publicity that it should be getting? The people it really needed to affect were those surrounding and involved in MLB and those fans that really follow it, who would have been looking for the report with or without names, in most cases. Not so important just for the Average Joe on the street.

The average joe who isn't a huge baseball fan might stop in his tracks if he catches a headline that says "Roger Clemens named as a steroid user". And so, that helps with the publicity and theoretically with the outcry, and theoretically again with the results. And you can't just name big name players, or else it is a witch hunt. So you name every player that you have some piece of evidence against.

Although, I agree. Brian Roberts shouldn't have been listed from what I understand of what they have on him.